Hello there, reader, and welcome back to another issue of Kat’s Kable. I write to you again on the cusp of a working day, so I am racing against time in wrapping this up before hastily eating breakfast (delicious! fresh bread) and then getting started with what promises to be a hectic and long day. Oh well. It will be enjoyable, though.
I’m actually excited about a work event I’m going to this week, because it’s the first one where I’m actually a part of the discussion, rather than just a participant. I’ve been invited to a couple of sessions, and I think people will even ask me for my opinions! I am going to fight away my imposter syndrome (some of which is valid in this case, actually) and try to participate in a nice way, and also have face-to-face conversations with some folks who I’ve only interacted with virtually.
Anyhow, that’s all I’ve got, as I’ve got to get that bread and also toast that bread. Enjoy this week’s list!
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1. It’s What You See - Eashan Ghosh’s blog
I shared this in issue #287 in September 2022, and I chanced to read it again this past week. It’s a tribute to Roger Federer’s career, and it’s a good one. It was really cool to read it for the second time and notice the change in my own views as a fan towards Federer; same, but more mellow and more grateful. It’s also a nice reminder to myself to go back and re-read things every once in a while just to anchor myself better.
2. How to Make Your Mind Maybe One-Third Quieter - Raptitude
Hmph, I’m not one to usually share these self-helpy kind of articles, but I liked this from David Cain about “silent” walks, which he interprets as a kind of meditation: every time a thought enters your head, shrug it off and pay attention to the sensory bouquet around you. While reading the essay, I realized that I do this, and I actively seek it out, and it’s really good for me. Not only does it make me feel calmer, but it also gives me a sense that I belong to the collective of humans that we are all a part of.
3. A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft - The New Yorker (soft paywalled)
Nice story by James Somers who talks about the effect that AI tools like GPT and GitHub Co-Pilot are having on the livelihoods of programmers. He recognizes that for now, he will have a job as it takes a good coder to coach GPT into giving you what you want, but eventually this will change and it will also change the profession of coding itself.
I keep thinking of Lee Sedol. Sedol was one of the world’s best Go players, and a national hero in South Korea, but is now best known for losing, in 2016, to a computer program called AlphaGo. Sedol had walked into the competition believing that he would easily defeat the A.I. By the end of the days-long match, he was proud of having eked out a single game. As it became clear that he was going to lose, Sedol said, in a press conference, “I want to apologize for being so powerless.” He retired three years later. Sedol seemed weighed down by a question that has started to feel familiar, and urgent: What will become of this thing I’ve given so much of my life to?
4. The Butchering - Emergence Magazine
A really lovely telling of the Kinaałda or the Diné puberty ceremony of the Navajo people in the southwest of the US. Jake Skeets talks about the entire ceremony, the importance of everyone being in a good state of mind leading up to it (“We enter the space with a lean toward what is beautiful in the world, what is right and balanced”) and the important task of butchering the sheep for the communal meal. Sometimes I find myself in a bit of a personal quandary reading accounts such as these: I really enjoy them and understand the cultural importance that they have while also taking my own personal stance of not eating any animal products. Oh well, such are the paradoxes of life, I feel.
The next time I butcher I’ll have my own story to tell, my own memory to share, knowledge to offer. One more voice to add to the chorus on those nights when you’re out in the desert under the night sky, no sound for miles, just the moon and the ground beneath you, reminding you it’s all real. That and your full stomach. Generations heard through wind, the air, the stirring gleaming stars. All that knowledge, all that story, all that beauty.
5. Foraging Elm Oyster Mushrooms (Hypsizygus ulmarius) - Forager Chef (Alan Brego)
Phew. Not a longform article, but such gorgeous pictures! Swooning.
6. The Nuclear Scientist And The Warplane That Became Britain’s Most Unlikely Airliner - The Drive
As you know, I’ve recently read Richard Rhodes’ Making of the Atomic Bomb and have been obsessed. One of the major episodes of WW2 was the way Niels Bohr was conveyed in safety to the UK, and this article goes into that in quite some detail: the need for a new plane to evade the Luftwaffe (birthing the wooden Mosquito!), the need for Swedish ball bearings, and passengers who had to be conveyed in the Mosquito’s bomb bays.
7. I Am the Ghost Here - Guernica Magazine
Surreal piece of fiction with a really nice twist at the end. It’s about the narrator’s introverted brother suddenly becoming gregarious and outgoing, and the family then realizing it’s because he’s being controlled by a puppeteer inside him, which leads to family rupture and then some.
8. Silicon or Carbon? - The Point Magazine (soft paywalled)
Nadia Asparouhova writes about her journey in America, how her parents met, how her childhood was, and how she felt welcomed in Silicon Valley. It’s quite nice, and the title of the article refers to two differing schools of thought: one grounded in the “reality” of physical things that constitute the world, and the other that views digital platforms and technologies as creating new institutions and worlds that can be as real as the one we live in. Good discussion and the piece also focuses a lot on Balaji Subramanian’s book The Network State.
But these differences risk distracting from tech’s most important role as the lightkeeper of innovation. Tech is what enables more people to take part in the good life, whatever that means to them. It’s the same spirit that brought my parents to America, that made me fall in love with San Francisco in the 2010s, that gives the Atoms and Bits the freedom to pursue their visions. […] But ultimately, the Atoms and Bits are two parts of the same dream, where anyone can build the world they want to see.
9. Studying the Swarm - Maison Neuve
“How bees can guide us toward more communal perspectives on reproduction and queer family-making.”
I didn’t love this essay but I did like it. Kate Barss talks about the challenges in the quest of a queer couple to start a family and have children while interweaving it with the life and society of bees. I found the comparison quite contrived at times, but it was still worth a read.